A season to relish language deeper than words
Cardinal Cormac Murphy-O’Connor says that the heart of the Christian story is the word made flesh. Christ’s language is sacrificial love which took him to the cross One of my favourite accounts of a happy childhood is told by Laurie Lee in his delightful book Cider with Rosie. Early on, he describes his first day at school. As a new boy in the playground for the first time, he was nervous and frightened of the noise, the size and the numbers of his fellow pupils. Going into the classroom, the teacher was busy with the other pupils. She told him to ‘sit down there for the present’. The young Laurie duly obeyed and sat down quietly in his place. When he got home he was obviously upset and disappointed. His mother asked him whether he liked the school. He told her he wasn’t going to school tomorrow. When she asked him why not, he cried and said, ‘They told me to sit there and wait for the present. I waited all day and no one gave me a present.’ That story tells a great deal about children’s understanding of language. And not just children. Words can mean different things to different people. Words can be creative and informative, beautiful and noble. They can be destructive and malicious too. Words once spoken can never be taken back. For better or worse, they take on a meaning of their own, defined and understood by the reader and listener in ways that the speaker and writer may never have intended. The countless words of radio and television, of newspapers and journals are intended to communicate information, convey truth and form opinion. The volume of words travelling back and forth by mobile phones, email and BlackBerries may well convey information. But do they communicate truth?
At the heart of the Christian story is the truth that God communicates himself not just in words but in a person. The gospel of John expresses this in a language which unites Hebrew and Greek thought and gives us an insight into the deepest thought of God. When God speaks, he doesn’t just talk about himself but reveals his innermost life. Verbum Caro Factus Est. The Word was Made Flesh. If we wish to know the truth about God, we listen and learn and enter into communion with Jesus, the Son of God, who became human so that we who are human might encounter the divine Emmanuel, God with us. Here is language that goes deeper than words. His language is sacrificial love which took him to the cross. Recognise love poured out to the point of death on the wood of the cross and we are able to catch a glimpse of the divine child in the wood of the manger.
The evangelists, and subsequent writers of the New Testament, try to capture these truths in a universal language, accessible to people of all times and circumstances. The accounts of the birth of Jesus in the gospels of Luke and Matthew are multi-layered, drawing from different sources to convey eternal truth. The question that presents itself in a different way this Christmas is what do these stories mean for us today? Like Italo Calvino’s definition of a classic, the New Testament ‘has never fin ished what it has to say’. It has to be translated into the unique circumstances of each individual life, into the challenges and circumstances of the present moment in order to speak of the transforming power of God’s intervening in my story and the story of our age.
These eternal truths are often better conveyed through signs and symbols, through poetry and music rather than dry, descriptive accounts. The universal language of the Nativity speaks to people of truths which go beyond words. The singing of carols, both ancient and modern, evoke truths taught from the earliest life of the Church continually needing to be unfolded and translated to speak to people of our own age. ‘God from God, Light of Light, Lo he abhors not the Virgin’s womb.’ ‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see. Hail the Incarnate Deity.’ Even in these credit-crunch days, the solidarity and love which lie at the heart of the Christmas season still find expression in charitable giving. ‘Therefore Christian men, be sure, Wealth or rank possessing, Ye who now will bless the poor, Shall yourselves find blessing.’ Up and down the country, in churches and schools, adults and children will gather together to sing the familiar words and watch the familiar images which will be given different meaning by the unique experiences of the year that has passed. Each one will read into the story ‘the hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight’.
Sights, sounds, images and smells, too. All have their part to play in evoking the mystery we try to capture in words. The mulled wine. The warm mince pies. The Christmas crib and the Christmas decorations. All merge to put us in touch with deeper truths. The smell of incense also. And the effort we make in our churches. John Betjeman puts it well in his poem called simply ‘Christmas’.
The holly and the windy hedge And round the Manor House the yew Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge, The altar, font and arch and pew, So that the villagers can say ‘The Church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.
At Christmas time, cathedrals also have their part to play in ‘describing the indescribable, speaking the unspeakable, painting a picture of the unpaintable’ story. The feast of liturgical and devotional music provided by the great choirs of St Paul’s Cathedral, Westminster Abbey and my own Westminster Cathedral. This great tradition of choral music ensures that the story of Christmas is told and retold in ways that captivate generation after generation. All over the country, cathedral and parish choirs extend themselves during this season.
And why? These are the words of T.S. Eliot written in his ‘Journey of the Magi’:
This set down This were we led all that way for Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly, We had evidence and no doubt. I had seen birth and death, But had thought they were very different; This Birth was Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms, But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation, With an alien people clutching their gods. I should be glad of another death.
So let me end with an image of a modern icon of the Nativity by Peter Wilke. This image is all so simple and devout: Christ is born in the cave. The star is there, as are the ox and the ass, and Mary his mother. When Christ comes among us, the first to worship him is Mary, the first to receive him and be sanctified by him. Notice her beautifully simple gestures: her right hand touching her heart in humility, and her left hand extended, acknowledging the Saviour wrapped in swaddling clothes, with the ox and the ass, as it were keeping vigil, perhaps keeping him warm with their breath, representing the Jewish and Gentile world into which he comes. The Christmas image tells us that this happens for us: unto us a child is born, the child who is himself the very image of God (Col.1.15), and we are asked to worship and receive him as Mary does, with simple faith and love.
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